Thursday, April 16, 2015

You are the best parent for your baby because God chose you.

It's funny, but true. There is an underlying judgment to all parenting decisions, and I admit that I fall prey to it more often than I should. Every parenting decision has pros and cons to both sides, and you have to decide what's best for your family and your baby. Breast vs. bottle. Cloth diapers vs. disposable. Stay home vs. daycare. Baby led schedule vs. parent led. The list goes on and on.

And it's easy to judge people who decide to do it differently than you. Why is that? I think there are a myriad of reasons, the main one being sin. We are prideful and want to think we are making the best decisions possible and we want others to validate that and recognize us as the best parents on the planet.

But, the thing is is that each parent can be the best parent in their own way. God gave you your specific baby for a purpose and chose YOU to be his/her parents. That's pretty amazing. God entrusts ME to take care of Norah and to be her mom, and specifically chose before the creation of the world that Kley would be her dad.

Sometimes it's hard to decide what to do for your baby. A few decisions are easy, but most are hard and complicated. Sometimes it's trial and error before you find something that works.

These two articles below sparked these thoughts. Very interesting.

Rooming in vs. Nursery care- Before I had Norah, I was set in stone that I wanted Norah in our room the entire time. I never wanted to send her to the nursery. After she was born, we ended up sending her to the nursery for the first night. Norah had swallowed a lot of fluid during birth, and was having problems with gagging. (She ended up having her stomach pumped and was completely fine, thankfully, but it was scary!) I was so worried and crying that she would gag while we were sleeping and we wouldn't wake up to help her. I would have never gotten sleep that night if we didn't send her. For that reason, I was glad they had the nursery so someone was always watching and ready to help her.

Give Breast Milk- Donating/selling your breast milk is also a hot topic. Many women choose to do so who have surplus. I strongly considered it, but in the end decided not to because I didn't have enough extra (for various reasons), and whatever extra I do have is being used in Norah's baby food.

I am not meaning to spark any discussions by these articles or any other topic. It's very interesting to think about, and my take away is this:

Making decisions for your baby is hard, and it's up to the parents. Yes, there are a few decisions I would downright disagree with, but most decisions have multiple sides and each side can be/is good. Most decisions are made from the background information that only the parents have about their baby, which other people don't know. So don't judge (or try your hardest not to), because you probably don't know the whole story. You are the best parent for your baby because God chose you.

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Hi! My name is Kelsey. I am a Christian, wife to Kley, and former preschool teacher turned stay-at-home-mom to Norah (2.5) and Lucy and Ellory (infant fraternal twins). We live in NW Iowa, and here I write about our happenings. Welcome to our story!